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God sayeth: invest in oil, gold and cases upon cases of my delicious protein shake

One of the New Year’s traditions I cherish most is eagerly waiting to discover how God is doing, and what He’s got up His billowy white sleeve for us – and, more specifically, for the market price of oil and gold.

Turns out that God plans to send gold rising to $3,000 an ounce and oil to $300 a barrel during 2009. How do I know this will occur? I know it because Pat Robertson, host of The 700 Club, has had his annual conversation with God – FYI, God is apparently fine, keeping busy, thanks for asking – and, as has become custom, Robertson has passed along to us the basic contours of the year to come, all while simultaneously guarding God’s privacy by refusing to divulge what the Lord Almighty was wearing for the chat or who will win today’s 7th race at Santa Anita.

For 2009, Robertson says God says commodity prices will soar, the U.S. will essentially become a socialist nation and the economic crisis will abate sooner than expected. “Cast off the gloom and doom because things are getting ready to turn around,” Robertson told his television audience.

The religious broadcaster chats with God every year around the holidays, which is a nice tradition and everything – except that Robertson’s record of passing along details of God’s plan is, well, sketchy at best. In 2006, for instance, he said that He said that a tsunami would crash into the U.S. coastline. In 2007, he claimed He claimed that the U.S. would suffer a terrorist attack resulting in a “mass killing” possibly involving millions of people.

Who knows how the details of these conversations get messed up. Maybe Robertson just starts zoning out after a while. You know how it is – you’ve got things to do and God just won’t stop going on about his latest smitings and where next his image will appear in a cinnamon bun or nacho chip or whatever. The mind wanders.

Meanwhile, Robertson continues to stand by his claim that a few years back, when he was 73 years old, he successfully leg-pressed 2,000 pounds – more than three times the weight typically pressed by the strongest of professional football players. Robertson, now in his late seventies, attributes his remarkable achievement to “an age-defying protein shake,” plenty of exercise and the fact that he’s lying.

In a totally unrelated complete coincidence, Robertson just so happens to be peddling a “diet shake” that “makes people strong and keeps them youthful.”  I’m no nutritionist, but the product seems to focus on reducing back strain by lightening the wallets of the dim-witted.

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